Ask The Experts Forum

What Can You Tell Me About RFID Tag Writing?

I have several questions about writing data to RFID tags. How would I put information on tags in the first place? What type of data can be encoded to tags? Is it only possible to encode a number? Or can I encode such information as names, URLs and so forth? And once the information is encoded, can it be edited again?

—Name withheld

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Passive RFID tags and readers communicate via something called an air-interface protocol, which usually includes a write command that allows you to write data to tags that have user memory to which you can write information (not all tags have this capability). Some readers have a graphical user interface that you can use to write data to tags, while some rely on third-party programs to send write commands to a reader.

Some tags have room only for a serial number, whereas others have blocks of user memory that you can write binary data to, including names and URLs. You can lock the user memory after you write to it and prevent it from being overwritten, or you can leave the user memory unlocked. If it is unlocked, you cannot edit it, but you can overwrite it with edited data.

—Mark Roberti, Founder and Editor, RFID Journal

USER COMMENTS

Robert Schmok

2015-08-10 03:34:53 AM

Can they economically make tiny UHF RDIF tags that can be used to track the location of small animals, such as squirrels, carrying chestnuts to various nearby locations? What kind of range is possible for a reasonably priced chip and reader system.

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